I’m so confused. I suppose that’s what you get when you hibernate from all things public for two years, then pick your head up and try to figure out the best way to engage with the world again.

When life was simpler, I just posted to my blog at feld.com . You could subscribe by RSS or email (via MailChimp). It automatically tweeted a link to the post.

When Medium became a thing, I used a WordPress plugin to cross-post there until it stopped working. Eventually, I grew tired of having the same context appear on Google twice – once under my blog and once under Medium, so I deleted my Medium account since I wasn’t using it for anything else.

When I fired everything back up on April 21st, WordPress now had a LinkedIn cross-poster built in, but no longer had a Twitter option. I had deleted all the social apps from my iPhone when I hibernated, so I downloaded X, LinkedIn, and Jetpack and got everything working again. I also learned some new and exciting things, such as how to use AI to generate a featured image like the one in this post, which, er, has some issues …

So, I now have:

• Feld.com
• LinkedIn bfeld
• X bfeld
• Substack bfeld

I’ve been unsubscribing from Substack spam for two years, mysteriously ending up subscribed to newsletters I didn’t want. I was curious about how the user interface worked, so I set up a Substack account yesterday. I ran a survey on X and LinkedIn to see if I should use my Substack account for content for Give First: The Power of Mentorship , along with my blog.

Pre-hibernation, my engagement on Twitter was 5-10x my engagement on LinkedIn. This has now flipped, and LinkedIn is 2-5x my engagement on X.

True to style in 2025, I have endless email, iMessage, and Slack. I reinstalled WhatsApp and joined a few groups. I’m even trying out Vinly and Whop to see if either is a good community system for Give First: The Power of Mentorship , although I need to find time to put some real effort into both to see if they are useful.

I’m not entirely sure what I want to do at this point, so, like many other things in life, I’m figuring it out by playing around with stuff and gathering feedback along the way.

I got an email from Matt Blumberg this morning with the above image that said,

“We have been blogging for 19 years. I can remember sitting together above Super Liquor futzing with Typepad like it was yesterday.”

“Super Liquor” is Superior Liquor in Superior, Colorado, which was on the first floor of the building off of Hwy 36, which was my office at the time. There was also a pizza restaurant on the first floor.

I asked Matt if we started on the same day because I couldn’t remember. He said,

“Literally the same day.  We sat at a desk right outside your office in Superior, pulled up our laptops, and taught ourselves Typepad together and created our templates.  Fred had already been blogging for about 6 months, and we had dinner the night before (can’t remember where, think The Med) and decided we would give it a try.  We couldn’t find other good examples of VC or CEO blogs. “

I went and looked at some of those first few posts. Matt’s was You’re Only a First Time CEO Once . Mine included To Blog or Not to Blog (which called out a handful of VC bloggers who started before me), Blog tools – Newsgator and Moveable Poster , TDC (Thinly Disguised Contempt) , and my first book review: Free Prize Inside the Radioactive Boy Scout Rate Hikes .

My favorite of those was TDC (Thinly Disguised Contempt) .

As was the tradition at the time when new bloggers appeared on the scene, Fred Wilson wrote nice posts linking to each of us. His welcome to Matt was Welcome to the Blog World Matt , and his welcome to me was This Is Going To Be Interesting .

This post wouldn’t be complete without my hat tip to Fred, who, in my view, is the OG VC blogger. His first post was creatively (well – not really) titled MY First Post .

19 years is a long time to do anything. It’s close to my board service record, which ironically was on Matt’s company Return Path with Fred. The ending of Fred’s first post resonates with me today as it did 19 years ago.

“I have no idea if i’ll write a lot in my blog or rarely. I hope its a lot, because i have a lot to say. But we’ll see about that.”

I just spent the last 30 minutes writing a blog post around a simple phrase that I like. I built out my thought process around it, used a handful of examples, and then filled in some additional ideas. I was proofreading it when I decided to go try to find the original source of the phrase.

The first page of Google’s results surprised me. There was nothing on the phrase I liked, but there was a wall of vitriol and controversy around a phrase that is close but had a few different words in it. When I read a few of the articles, I quickly was able to tie it back to something someone at Breitbart said. And then I vaguely remembered the controversy around the phrase.

I realized that it would be easy to misinterpret the phrase I liked as the phrase that had all the controversy around it. I said them both out loud and slowly a few times, and concluded that the post needed a lot more work if I were to publish it. Basically, if someone read what I wrote and thought about it, they’d likely separate what I was saying from the other quote that I found objectionable. Or, if they didn’t know about the other quote, they’d just be tracking what I said.

But, if they knew the other quote, the controversy, and they felt strongly one way or another about it, then what I wrote would likely be lost is the soup of the previous controversy.

Normally, when I write, I just hit publish after I’m done. I learn a lot from writing and it helps me work out my thoughts and ideas, which is the main reason I do it. I don’t try to get everything right the first time through (if you are a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll notice the iteration of lots of stuff as I refine it with different examples, evolve my thinking, or respond to other challenges and stimulus.)

In this case, I was worried that my thoughts would be judged because of the linkage to the controversy around this other phrase. Given the two phrases, this is deliciously ironic (kind of like capers, which I despise.) So, I hit save draft instead of publishing the post, wrote this post instead, and am now heading out for a run to contemplate what just happened, since I think this may be the first time in about 5,000 posts that I experienced this hesitation to just publish something I wrote.

My partners Chris Moody , Seth Levine , and Lindel Eakman are all blogging right now. My other two partners, Ryan McIntyre and Jason Mendelson have blogged in the past, ut took a break in 2017. Also, the Foundry Group blog is always active, with occasional thought pieces but mostly updates on initial financings both for companies and other funds that we invest in.

So, I thought I’d point you at Moody, Seth, and Lindel’s blogs (and some posts) in case you are interested in following more of what we are doing at Foundry Group.

Moody’s recent post Two Steps Forward, One Step Back  talks about being a few months into his gig as a VC, after his announcement of his transition from operator to VC in Joining Foundry Group .

Seth has started a Friday series named Friday Fun  because the world needs more fun. His longer thought pieces like The Feature -> Product -> Company Continuum , How to value your SaaS company , and Reading Your VC Pitch Meeting  are must-read posts for me – and for every founder and company executive. Also, Seth’s not afraid to be very personal and open, as he shows in his post Drowning .

Lindel is getting into a grove with posts like Saying “No” too often is part of being a good investor , Mi Casa Es Su Casa – How we seek to interact with our family of GPs , and Venture Risk and Return circa 2017 . Very few LPs blog, so it’s neat to add Lindel’s perspective as a fund investor into the mix.

If you are following and reading me, I encourage you to follow and read my partners to get the full view of how we think about things at Foundry Group .

I took the last two weeks off from blogging. It was a nice vacation.

While I try to blog every day, I don’t have a daily ritual like Fred Wilson does. Fred and I have talked about this a few times – for him, it is meditation, discipline, and ritual. I’ll let him say it in his own words.

“But I’ve come to realize that the daily post, and its quality or lack thereof, is not really the thing. It is the ritual, the practice, the frequency, the habit, and the discipline that matters most to me.”

In the past four years, I’ve tried to move away from time-based disciplines. I realized that my obsession with time and schedule, such as waking up every morning at 5 am no matter what time zone I was in, was one of the inputs into my depressive cycles. My weekly “wall of blue” (what I refer to my calendar – and what it looks like – basically fully committed between 9 and 5 from Monday to Friday) was another.

About four years ago I started removing time-based disciplines from my life. I still have many time-based rhythms – often imposed by others – that I adhere to. Most of the business world runs on a time-based rhythm (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually) so that’s a background that I have to operate within. However, I’ve systematically tried to eliminate as many of these self-imposed rhythms as I can.

I wake up whenever I feel like it. I try to schedule less, not more, phone calls. I try to leave an increasing amount of time unscheduled. There are long stretches of time where this is difficult, and the wall of blue takes over.

As I rolled into August, I knew I was facing an intense two weeks. I foreshadowed that in my post Total Failure at Summer Maker Mode . After writing one more post on July 31st, I gave myself permission to take a two-week vacation from blogging.

Regularly readers notice when I go off the grid for a vacation, which varies in length from a week to a month. This wasn’t a work vacation, but it was a blogging vacation. It felt good not to think about writing for two weeks as I just focused on work, running, resting, and being with Amy.

While my schedule is still pretty full, it’s not as full, and as I look forward the wall of blue has some space in it. Between that, and a nice two-week break, writing once again appeals to me.

We have some entertaining news to share with you today. We have recently registered with the SEC and are now considered Registered Investment Advisors. Did we do this so that we can have cooler business cards? No. Did we do this because our back office was lacking in purpose? Heck no.

We had to, per the SEC rules. And the reason you ask? Well, we can’t tell you that or we could possibly break some other SEC rules. So for now, just accept that your friendly neighborhood venture capital firm is now subject to a lot of new and stimulating paperwork.

Why are we even bothering telling you this? Because it will affect what we can say on the Foundry Group blog and personal blogs that we write. We’ll have to be careful with statements that we make about companies we invest in. We’ll also be cautious in what we write about our funds or the industry in general. According to the SEC rules, we can no longer write anything that “promotes” our funds. While we’d argue that we never try to promote our firm, but just write anything that comes to mind and try to have fun doing it, with our new registration status comes new responsibilities.

This will be a learning process for us and our goal is to bring you content that is still 100% transparent. Please be patient with us if there are hiccups along the way, or perhaps even questions that we can’t legally answer in the comment sections anymore.

And as always – thank you all for the support. We love what we do and the community, and our interaction with you through our blogs, is a big reason why. And, don’t worry, there will be a third VC video from us – someday.

Two words: Mattermark Daily

When I started blogging in 2004 I think I was the third VC blogger after David Hornik * and Fred Wilson  (if you were, or know, of another pre-2004 VC blogger, please tell me so I can update my historical recollection.)

I remember lots of people asking me why I was doing it. I heard plenty of trash talk from other VCs, especially second hand, such as “He doesn’t have enough to do”, “He’s not spending his time doing his job”, or “What a waste of time.” I didn’t care, as I was doing it – like Fred often said – to help me think out loud in public, learn about different things, and get a conversation going around topics I was interested in. In retrospect, it was also helping me “practice writing” and without all the practice, it’s unlikely I would have ever gotten in the rhythm of writing a book a year.

Today, hundreds of VCs blog. Some are focused on using content marketing strategies to build their brand and reach . Some seem to have a full time person on the team generating content for them. Some do it under their name; other’s do it on their firm’s web site. Even more have tried and never got past a dozen posts.

Regardless of one’s success, it’s become extremely hard to track all the new content coming out and sort the good from the bad. My somewhat up-to-date VC People Feedly collection has 139 feeds in it . But I stopped being rigorous about adding new people about a year ago and rarely added feeds that were directly on firm websites, so I expect there are probably closer to 500 active VC bloggers now. And, this doesn’t include the guest articles that regularly show up on various sites like TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and Business Insider.

Rather than struggle to keep up, I’m just defaulted to relying on Mattermark Daily to tell me what to read each day. And, I always remember what I tell entrepreneurs: “It’s just data – and it’s often wrong.” Read a lot, but always apply your own critical thinking.

*Update: Naval Ravikant told me that he, Kevin Laws, and Andrew Anker were also part of VentureBlog (dating back to 3/2003). It now appears to be Hornik’s blog.

I’ve decided to try something new on this blog. Rather than using up full posts for short announcements, I’ve added a new block for announcements at the top of the home page. It’s in orange, will generally be only a few lines, and include a link.

Since these are just blog posts being formatted differently, they will show up in the RSS feed and the daily email. In addition, there is a page in the Archives for the announcements.

If you have any feedback on this (good or bad), I’d love to hear it.

As my newest book, Startup Opportunities: Know When To Quit Your Day Job , has begun shipping on Kindle (order now and give me feedback, leave a review) I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately. Startup Opportunities took 18 months to write and most of the slowness was me, not my co-author Sean Wise. It was an interesting struggle to get done which I’ll write about at another time.

I love to write. It’s the way I put my thoughts together. I’ve never really understood the phrase “I’m thinking about it” – I never consciously sit and think, but when I’m writing my brain is often doing the job of thinking.

I also love to read. It’s the way I put my thoughts together and learn new things. I’ve never been an auditory learner. I remember sitting in classes at MIT, listening to the professor lecture, and understanding almost nothing. But then, when I sat down and read the course notes, or whatever reading material was assigned, it all became clear. I’m sure the verbal stuff entered my brain somehow, but it didn’t really turn into something I understood completely until I was able to sit and read.

Fortunately, I’m a fast reader. And after writing millions of words, I’ve become a fast writer. When I’m asked how I read or write so fast, I have a simple answer – practice.

I continuously read essays that talk about the end of books. The end of the publishing industry. How humans are reading less. Crap like that. While it makes for nice self-referential essays in magazines like The Atlantic, or books by authors about how Google is making us stupid, I think it’s all wrong.

I think the fundamental thing that is changing is the distribution of written information. This is nothing new – it’s been going on since the Egyptians created the writing systems 4,500 years ago . And, it is going to get really interesting in the next twenty years as humans become much more integrated with machines, as I’m completely ready to jack in to the Internet full-time.

When I think of the different forms I read and write, it ranges from what I call “the long form” (books) to “the nano-form” (tweets). On a daily basis, I consume books, essays (posts on Medium, magazine articles), blogs, emails, Facebook posts, Tweetstorms, and Tweets. While I don’t use Yo anymore, you can bring it all the way down to the human-nano level.

When I look at the activity in my Goodreads feed , it’s clear to me that the book is not dead. Many of the people I respect, follow, and have relationships with are deep thinkers and love to read – both for learning and recreation. Sure, the book is competing with a lot of other media types, but reading (and writing) seems to persist quite successfully.

Is the book really dead? In 20 years, will we still be calling them books, or will they be something else, in the same way that no one under the age of 10 knows what a record is.

Every few years I update the look and feel of my blog. This year is a significant upgrade, both on look and feel as well as the entire back end infrastructure.

In the past six months, I’ve started to notice complexity creep into everything in our world. While design is still front and center for many developers and entrepreneurs, I’ve gotten tired of the overwhelming UIs, confusing UXs, and immense complexity under the hood. It’s kind of like a calendar that just keeps getting stuff added to it – all of a sudden you are busy for all of your waking hours with meetings, and have no time to really get any work done.

We took a completely bottoms up approach this time and started from scratch. We tossed everything out and rebuilt everything – the infrastructure, the blog, and the design – from the ground up.

A thing you probably won’t notice, but is the starting point, is that we’ve moved feld.com to Pantheon . We are investors and love the company. The only thing you should notice is lightning fast response all the time, regardless of traffic load. If you ever notice anything different, please tell me.

Next, we approached the design from a minimalist perspective, which is coming back into vogue in a lot of places. My blog was starting to feel like a Geocities site to me, with all kinds of additional crap on it beyond my writing, and I decided I just wanted it to focus on my writing and my community in the comments. I copied Fred Wilson in this regard as he made this shift a while ago. After looking at many popular blogs, I kept coming back to his approach.

We’ve tried to do this in a way that keeps the writing front and center but still has easy access to other things on feld.com. On the left is site specific stuff, such as additional feld.com content (About, Investments, and Marathons), clear discovery (Search, Categories, and Tags). On the right is post specific actions (Comments, Category for the Post, Tags for the Post, and Sharing options.)

If you want to subscribe to anything or follow me anywhere, that’s on the top right.

We’ve also rebuilt the data underlying things from scratch. We’ve gotten rid of a ton of plug-ins that either weren’t being used or didn’t add anything (other than slowing the site down). We worked hard on a site that could be viewed on any platform, regardless of browser or mobile device. And we’ve tried to keep the principle of clean, minimal, and readable – with the focus on the content – throughout.

I’m sure there are many, many things we could improve. As I roll into 2015, we are going to finalize this theme with your feedback, and then apply it to all the other active sites in our universe, especially StartupRev.com which desperately needs an overhaul.

So – comment with any feedback you have – good, bad, and other. Constructive or flamey. In the comments, or via email to me. And, if we blew it, we’ll keep iterating.

Every year or so I freshen up the Feld Thoughts design. This time I did it with the help of Cole Morrison, who is the Hackstar I hired at the end of last year .

I’ve gotten some feedback so far but am looking for more. And I’m happy to get whatever you’ve got for us – nice, constructive, or harsh. Whatever comes to mind – just toss it in the comments or email it.

For an example of “substantial” and “harsh” take a look at this. Like all helpful feedback, it’s very precise and actionable.

I get asked all the time for a list of “tech reporters / bloggers” to contact around an announcement. A few weeks ago, I was pointed to a list on the web by Brownstein & Egusa titled the Tech Reporter Contact List. It’s actually seven lists.

1. Top 100 Tech Blogs
2. Top Tech Blog Reporters
3. Top 100 Newspapers
4. Reporters At Top 100 Newspapers
5. Popular Bloggers
6. Mobile Blogs
7. SEO Blogs

As a bonus, there’s also a good Beginners Guide To PR up on the same site.

As a VC who has been blogging for a long time I’ve been fascinated by the VC Blogger phenomenon. I’ve been subscribing to, reading, forwarding, occasionally commenting, and setting up networks of feeds for a while.

With the relaunch of AsktheVC  we’ve resurrected something we used to do periodically which is highlight a great VC post. However, we are taking a different tact this time around with our new motto.

“We read all the VC Bloggers so you don’t have to.”

It’s not quite the gray lady, but hey, we are just VCs and bloggers, not real journalists. Jason and I already have some great posts up from guys like Jeff Bussgang (Flybridge), Mark Suster (GRP), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures), Charlie O’Donnell (First Round Capital) and 500 Startups. We’ll provide a little additional insight, or at least a pithy comment.

We’ve also got a full list of known VC bloggers (at least to us) on the sidebar of AsktheVC. If we are missing anyone (I’m sure we are), please email me and I’ll add them.

If you have an iPad, go look at Feld Thoughts in the browser on it right now. I’ll wait. If you don’t have an iPad, it looks like the following.

My friends at Onswipe did that. In one minute. All it took was one line of Javascript. Onswipe was in the TechStars NY program and did an awesome job. Not surprisingly they’ve put together an awesome investor group including Spark Capital and Betaworks .

As someone who loves magic services that dramatically improve my content, Onswipe is the king of the iPad so far. The key for me is that it be trivial to set up and work flawlessly. In this category, Onswipe has nailed it. And it’s beautiful – way better than trying to read my blog in Safari on an iPad.

They’ve launched with a bunch of publishers. If you are a VC that looks at PEHub , go take a look on an iPad. Or check out Slate on your iPad. And there are a lot more coming.

If you are a publisher and you want your site to be beautiful on the iPad in one minute, go sign up for the Onswipe beta now.

At the beginning of October, I wrote a post titled New Email Newsletter on Work-Life Balance where I decided to try a new email newsletter tool called Letter.ly to produce a paid email newsletter on work-life balance ($1.99 / month).  I’ve decided to end this experiment and sent out the following letter to the email list tonight.  Of course, because I didn’t tune the settings on Letter.ly it tweeted out the post, which recursively forced you to subscribe to read it.  Oops.  Here it is.

I’ve decided to end my experiment with Letter.ly (and – more importantly – “paid subscription content.”)  I want to thank each of you for being part of this experiment.

I realize there was a cost to it (I think some of you have paid $1.99, others have paid $3.98 to date.)  I tried to refund the money, but there wasn’t an easy way to do this.  As a result, if I encounter any of you in the next year, I’m perfectly happy to reimburse you directly (just ask for the cash).  If we don’t cross paths physically, please feel free to ask me for a favor via email (brad@feld.com ) or, if you really want your money back, email me your Paypal account info and I’ll Paypal you $1.99 or $3.98 (depending on how much you paid.)

Now, on to why I decided to stop this experiment.  Basically, I found it incredibly unsatisfying.  As an almost-daily blogger since 2005 (and often more than once a day), I thought it would be interesting to explore paid content via an email newsletter approach.  It was interesting – in that I feel a combination of “strange pressure to produce” combined with “discomfort with charging for the content.”

1. Strange Pressure to Produce: After five years of blogging, writing a post has no emotional content at this point.  I just write.  Sometimes my posts are insightful; often they are just words.  I don’t feel the need to “produce valuable stuff” – I figure people will read the posts if they want.  In contrast, every few days I thought about the idea of writing something for this newsletter.  Ideas would cross my mind, but they were rarely compelling to me.  Yet I felt pressure to write.  Periodically, the following thought would cross my mind: “If I don’t write at least $1.99 worth of stuff a month, I’m going to be letting down my readers.” And then I’d contemplate this. $1.99?  Seriously?  Is this how I’m valuing things all of sudden?  The mere fact that I was thinking about this, especially since there was no practical way that the amount of money I’d make from this would have any impact on my life, seemed like a waste of mental and emotional cycles.

2. Discomfort With Charging for the Content: This is related to the idea that the money isn’t material to me.  Over the past 60 days, I’ve seen several tweets that said some version of “Seriously Feld, you are charging for your content?” of “Feld puts up a paywall.”  While I don’t object to getting paid for content, this seemed like a really strange / retro way to do it.  Whenever I pondered it, I was uncomfortable; whenever someone called me out on it I felt strange.

I learned what I wanted from this experiment – I don’t want to write a paid newsletter, nor do I want to charge subscribers directly for blog-like content that I produce.  With that, the experiment is over. Going forward, I’ll be posting all of my Work-Life Balance writing to my blog at www.feld.com , regardless of whether or not this impacts my book publisher’s view on the content.

As there appears to be no way to delete this newsletter, please unsubscribe.  In the mean time, I’ve lowered the monthly price to $0.10 (the lowest the system will let me charge.)

A few weeks ago I had my weekly mentor meeting with Ian and Adam from Gearbox .  We messed around with the latest version of “the ball” on an Android phone and then talked about a bunch of things that were going on.  I am totally amazed at the technical progress they are making this summer – these guys are magicians.  But they’ve been shy about getting out there and showing off what they’ve been up to.  My sense after talking to them is that their hesitancy was a combination of prioritization, focus, and “the need to get everything right.”

I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something like “this stuff is so fucking cool – just start blogging about what you are doing, get the API out there, and get out in front of the world with this.”  Two days later they sent me a note that their first blog post Gear What? was up and they’ve been blogging and talking up a storm ever since, including emerging on the bunker to play on the Pearl Street Mall and flying to Aspen in Paul Berberian’s plane to spend the day at Mini Maker Faire Aspen.

Now they are having a Hackathon on the weekend of July 24th/25th.  An early version of their API is out and I’ve seen some cool shit running on an Android phone so I know it’s hackable.  If you are an Android developer, this is going to be fun, plus there’s the staple of every hackathon (free food, beer, and red bull.)  If you want to play, send an email to ian [at] gearbox [dot] me.

Oh – and if you are into robots, go check out the 2010 Denver Robot Expo & Mini Maker Faire.  Yup – the Gearbox guys will be there.

As you may have noticed, I’ve got a new blog design, as do my partners Jason Mendelson, Ryan McIntyre , and Seth Levine .  Every year or so I get bored of my blog design and we go through a nice little upgrade.  Our good friends at Slice of Lime do all the design work and Ross (our IT guy) wrangles everything. 

We’re still changing some stuff, but if you have any suggestions or notice any bugs, please leave comments so I can tune things up.

A meme that regularly goes around the blogosphere is “full disclosure.”  When someone blogs about something they have a financial interest in (e.g. an equity interest in a company) or something they benefit from financially (e.g. affiliate fees), should they include a “formal disclosure.”

I received the following email today:

“I appreciate all your book recommendations over the last several posts.  It’s a great service.  However, with full disclosure being the norm these days, you might want to mention that you benefit from book sales via your Amazon affiliate status.  Pardon me if you have previously done this.”

So – for full disclosure, I benefit from book sales via my Amazon affiliate status.  I don’t pay close attention to how much I get from this as I’m much more interested in the data underlying which books you dear reader actually buy and read as one of the features of the affiliate program is all the data I get from it.

My purpose of having an Amazon affiliate code is three fold:

1. I want to understand how the Amazon affiliate program works (and evolves).  This helps me with all of my investing activity.
2. I am obsessed with the underlying data.  All of the various affiliate / advertising programs I have on this blog provide me with a variety of data.  I learn from this and can then help the companies I’m an investor in understand what appeals and doesn’t appeal to a publisher, using me as an example.
3. I make enough money to get a discount from all of the books I buy at Amazon each year.

Summary: #1 and #2 help me as an investor.  #3 generates a modest amount of money to me.

Let’s focus on #3 for a minute since this I think this is the core of the “full disclosure” email I received.  In my case, I buy over 250 books / year at Amazon (I don’t know the exact number, but I’m estimating five a week which, based on what is on my Kindle along with the infinite pile of unread books, is low.)  Since I’m buying a lot more on my Kindle these days, let’s use the average Kindle price of $10 which is also going to be low given the number of hardcover books in the infinite pile.  That’s $2,500 per year of books.  I expect that number is off by at least 100% – so I’m spending somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000 per year on books at Amazon.

I just ran my earnings report from Amazon for the past 12 months.  Via my affiliate code, I’ve sold a net of 666 items (eek – subtle message in that – it’s actually 675 with returns of 7 and refunds of 2.)  I’ve generated $16,247.89 for Amazon and received $1,072.89 in referral fees.

So – even if you take my $2,500 number, by buying books via my blog you’ve effectively helped me get a 40% discount from Amazon (20% if you take the $5,000 number, which I think is more realistic given my book buying habit.)

In either case, the financial beneficiary here is Amazon, not me, although I guess you could argue that I’m ahead by whatever my effective discount is.  If my “book recommendations is a great service”, presumably this won’t really bother anyone (it might not have regardless). However, if every post I put up had an italicized “summary” of this post (or a link to it), that would probably get annoying over time! 

I’m going to think more about what full disclosure actually means in the context of the evolving shift of purchasing, advertising, and content online.  In the offline world, the construct of a reseller is well established (e.g. no one ever requires full disclosure from a bookstore when they sell – or promote – a book as it is well understand that they make a margin on every sale.)  I get that there are different issues in the online world, especially around content, but as the creative destruction of the Internet starts to really take a toll on retail (and resellers), there may be new issues around the construct of full disclosure*.*

Finally, thanks to the blog reader who pointed this out to me.  I hope this doesn’t come across as a gigantic rationalization on my part, or a defensive argument.  Instead, my goal was to think through this out loud, in public, and in the spirit of full disclosure.  If anyone out there has anything to add, or core principles that can help me define a forward looking view on this (e.g. what this should look like from 2010 forward), please weigh in with a comment.